Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience.And if it hurts,it's probably worth it.God is Love!

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Damn, the disclosure of PRISM cost my money;-)

Time is running on. It's been about two years after Mr.Sn0wden made the 1st disclosure of those documents back in June 2013. Everybody was shocked back then. In security/hacker community, those news about what BIG BROTHER did to us was nothing new. Guess most people already knew it. But what Mr.Sn0wden brings us, is to confirm the details about how BIG BROTHER has been doing the shit. More importantly, it has educational purposes for the public. The whole world is fuc*ing changed, because of PRISM disclosure. People( I mean crypto-anarchist, professional paranoia, etc) think differently from then. To myself( as a FOSS cybersecurity dude), the PRISM definitely changed my life.

I kept reading some astonishing news about leaked documents back in July 2013 and thought a lot during the period of oSC2013 at a beautiful city nearby Aegean Sea. "What should I do about it? Should I get involve with something? What kind of philosophical ideas can better fit in post-prism era?" and so on..these questions I asked myself many times. Then I was thinking ......

1, Philosophical level. Well, free software philosophy would be the same to me since 2007. The concept of free/libre is more important than ever before. In post-prism era, BIG BROTHER and big corps are too powerful to restrict the individual freedom in digital world. Although we've won the war between open vs. closed. But many people still misunderstand about the differences between free software and open source. IMOHO, support FSF( Free Software Foundation) will always be on my TODO.

2, Technical level. Many researches reveal that open system is more secure than closed one. Btw, Bruce Schneier agrees with that. After all these years, I finally realize there are two powerful weapons we can use to against the enemy: System security & Cryptography. Some people only focus on crypto and OS level security is totally missing, which might cause a failure. It's like building a fortress upon the sand. Some 0ld sch00l hackers criticised about it last year. In the practical cases to GNU/Linux users, PaX/Grsecurity is the only option we have.

3, Law level. Speak of law & public education, EFF has been doing the great work in past two decades. Why would I support EFF? The reason is so simple: They speak for me, or they speak for the type of person like me.

I did the math a little bit today and found out I've donated around $5800 to the FOSS community including FSF, EFF, Debian, Mempo, PaX/Grsecurity, HardenedLinux, HardenedBSD since the disclosure of PRISM. I'm not trying to convince anyone to donate money to any organizations here. But I'm encouraging you to think for yourself, about why are you here reading my fuc*ing annoying & noisy blog? Does free software matters to you? Or don't you think is worth supporting about what EFF is doing?